Prefs change on the server every now and then
6 Jun 2019 13:34:53 UTC
Topic 218999
(moderation:
Hi.
I prefer running Einstein on my AMD GPU only. I make this clear in the prefs:
Use CPU: NO
Use NVIDIA GPU: NO
USE AMD GPU: YES
USE INTEL GPU: NO
But after some time (sometimes months, sometimes weeks, sometimes days) my machines grab other stuff, and when I look into the prefecences I find this:
Use CPU: YES
Use NVIDIA GPU: YES
USE AMD GPU: YES
USE INTEL GPU: YES
Don't know why this is happening, but I don't like it.
Is this behaviour something the team can fix?
Thanks for looking into it.
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Greetings, Jens
gemini8 wrote:Is this
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I would guess the answer is no because the project itself is quite unlikely to be causing this. If the project was doing this to your account, it would be doing it to all accounts and we would have all heard about it a long time ago :-).
Your computers are hidden so it's not possible for other volunteers to see what type and how many computers you run. I guess it's likely to be more than one since we can see at least 30 active projects and several more that are currently inactive. I suspect you might need more than just one computer to handle all of those :-).
I don't know for sure what is causing your problem but I suspect it may be related to when and where you change preferences for the various members of your large group of projects. There are 4 available 'locations' (aka venues) for which you can make preference changes and you could be making those changes for different locations at different projects.
The project where you make the latest preference change becomes the 'master' project and that change can then be communicated to other projects that are common to a single machine. For that reason, the advice from many years ago was to choose one project to be the master, only make preference changes there and wait for those changes to propagate to other machines and other projects.
It's quite complicated but quite possible that there might be a path that allows your Einstein machine to be affected inadvertently by a change at a different project that was intended to affect only an entirely different machine. To eliminate this possibility you probably need to draw yourself a very good 'map' of projects, locations, machines and how they all interact with each other. I suspect you will solve your problem by doing something like this.
If you care to give details about your machines, the different 'locations' you use and the project mix that each machine supports, it would help others to assist you to work out what might be causing the problem.
Cheers,
Gary.
Hi. Thanks for the
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Hi.
Thanks for the answer.
All of my machines are attached to about every project they can crunch, totally excluding LHC-Dev, Primaboinca and Radioactive@home. On the Windows machine (which uses the AMD GPU) this means every project except Wep-M+2, on the Linux machines every project except Gerasim and QCN, and on the Mac OS boxes every project that supports Macintosh, partly except QCN (not enough sensors).
I am using BAM! to tell my machines which projects they should get work from, using different resource settings for the projects to have Boinc managing the different work-loads automatically (as long as there's no race on any project). BAM! is propagating machine-only preferences, so computers should not use any global ones. This feature was broken on Boinc for some software revisions, and fixed somewhen after 7.6.33. My machines have different preferences set up for every one of them. For the box I'm having problems with atm I set it to not get any Nvidia or CPU tasks, so the AMD GPU should be the only one to receive work, as there's no usable Intel one.
Also, apart from PrimeGrid, I'm not using venues. I set those up in Mai or April, but the problems with Einstein preferences changing without me doing anything I'd know of occurred several times before.
Btw.: Usually I'd have no problems with Einstein using my Nvidia GPUs, but as it is the only project that reserves a full CPU core for GPU work it tends to kick out CPU projects from their slot, when running after an other GPU project's work-unit, and if this happens to an LHC VM it's not too unusual for the VM to stop working properly. So, I switched to run Einstein on my AMD GPU only, to have this slot fully equipped all the time with the VM related problems disappearing. Just recently allowed Enigma on AMD as well, as there's problems with it running on Windows/Nvidia.
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Greetings, Jens
There are 2 different types
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There are 2 different types of settings to control how Boinc is run.
Computing preferences - Controls processor usage, disk and memory usage and network usage. This is a global setting and apply to all projects. When Boinc contacts a project and the project server discovers that the settings Boinc have are older than the last modification date on the project server then the new settings will be sent, if it's the other way around then the settings on the project server will be updated. This is how the computing preferences get synced between projects.
Project preferences - Controls all things project specific. Resource settings, if Boinc should download work for the CPU and what type of GPU to use if present, Beta settings, graphics settings and so on.
As this is a project specific setting that varies between projects it's not synced, on has to review and set this at every project.
The setting should not change by themselves!
Do you use a Account Manager to manage what projects you support, for example BAM? (I don't and never have)
If so check and see if you can set project preferences through it and if that's the case then only use it to change your settings.
gemini8 wrote:Hi.Thanks for
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One way to do it manually is to add a cc_config.xml file kind of like this:
<cc_config>
<options>
<use_all_gpus>1</use_all_gpus>
<exclude_gpu>
<url>https://einsteinathome.org/</url>
<device_num>1</device_num>
[<type>NVIDIA|ATI|intel_gpu</type>]
</exclude_gpu>
</options>
</cc_config>
or simply add <type>Nvidia</type> inside <exclude_gpu> without <device_num> specified.
That would exclude the AMD or Nvidia or Intel gpu from Einstein, you can even have multiple lines excluding the AMD gpu on one line and the Intel gpu on another line. Boinc still use ATI instead of AMD so be careful there. The cc_config.xml file would just go in the c:\programfiles\boinc folder in Windows. If you've never used one before use Notepad in Windows to save it as a 'text type file' and then be sure the '.txt' extension is removed when you save it. After you've placed it in the correct folder go to Boinc Manager, down by the clock, on that machine and click options, read config files and you should be good to go.
Thank you. It's not about
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Thank you.
It's not about the computing preferences. My Einstein project preferences change by themselves, or at least without me doing anything consciously. Actually, BAM! is able to manage both using different machine-related preferences instead of global preferences. The project preferences are ignored for some projects, unfortunately.
But, whatever happened exactly: I set my project preferences for both my Windows machine (through BAM!) and globally (on the Einstein project server) to exclusively run AMD GPU tasks.
Just to have mentioned this as well: I'm under the impression that this occurred on some other projects as well after the server software was updated. As Einstein usually informs its crunchers about such things beforehand I cannot say that this is the case here.
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Greetings, Jens
Thanks for the idea with the
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Thanks for the idea with the cc_config file.
This is a valid possibility to circumvent the problem! :-)
I'll try this if no other solution is found, as I'd like to be able to change the project preferences also when being away from home in order to adjust my machines for races. ;-)
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Greetings, Jens
It's the same problem here
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It's the same problem here for me.
I use the same preferences Gemini8 uses. I changed them in all 4 profiles. But my Nvidia card got wus again. When I looked, all preferences were set back to default.
Edit:
Preferences Project Page says on top: No preferences found for set 'xxx'.
It seems that changes aren't stored correctly.
Hi. Same problem again. Had
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Hi.
Same problem again.
Had a look at the preferences that I stored last time:
'No preferences found for set 'home'. Click SAVE CHANGES below to save the following preferences to your account.'
Well, I did that.
I really have to assume the problem is on the server-side.
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Greetings, Jens
'Every now and then' has
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'Every now and then' has become 'quite regularly'. In fact, it is about every few days.
I'm under the impression that Einstein changes the preferences stored on the server whenever.
I'm totally not happy with this!
I have disallowed everything apart from AMD on every single machine, even if not attached to Einstein.
I don't use venues on any project anymore, so projects should not be able to affect each other.
Global project prefs (here, on this server!) keep changing to serve CPU, AMD, NVIDIA and Intel work to my boxes.
Other locations/venues keep disappearing after being saved. (I have even tried this with different browsers to see if there might be problems with blocked scripts or whatever on my end. Saving prefs for the defauld venue is working fine.)
This has happened to at least two people as can be read in this thread.
Sorry, but I'm really annoyed by the utter incompetence of the project staff to look at least at the immediately disappearing respectively not being saved at all venues (home/school/work) which only can happen on your side!
Please investigate this fuss!
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Greetings, Jens
This is happening to me,
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This is happening to me, too.
For the last 3 or 4 weeks the server "forgets" my home and work venues almost every day
and I have to abort the downloaded tasks I excluded there.
I hope this wiil be fixed soon.